


In The Heat That Filled The Air, Part Of Him Still Lingers There

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 18:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10859643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Aria and Nicole can pretend it's not happening, until they come face to face.





	In The Heat That Filled The Air, Part Of Him Still Lingers There

_It's alright  
It's alright when you can just imagine  
There's no face, she's not real  
And you can tell yourself it's all okay_

_But she's here  
And my heart cries this isn't happening  
But the truth is cold and real  
And I know this storm won't go away_

_Now that I've seen her  
There's no way to hide  
She is not some fling   
From long ago  
Now that I've seen her  
I know why he lied  
And I think it was better when I didn't know_

Nicole had known there was something Ezra wasn’t telling her. There was something about him, some look on his face, some distance she felt that she had never really felt in South America. Sure, he was by her side, but only because her family had called him and asked him to be there, not because he had chosen to be. And she thought she knew why. That day when she’d tried calling him, to let him know she was on her way home to him, and someone else had answered the phone, Nicole had thought the voice sounded like Aria Montgomery.

She’d quickly hung up, not wanting to get into anything with Aria. She had to focus on the fact that she was finally getting to go home, to reunite with her family again, she couldn’t deal with Aria at that point. And then when it came time for her to fly home, and Ezra had flown out there to be by her side, Nicole started to hope that maybe the whole thing had been some kind of crazy mistake, that maybe that hadn’t even been Aria on the other end of the phone. Ezra never mentioned her name the whole time he was there, and Nicole didn’t ask, didn’t want to hear that something had happened between them the whole time she was presumed dead.

Then he had flown home to Rosewood, and her family had made it clear they didn’t think much of him leaving her side so soon, and Nicole wondered then. He’d reappeared soon afterwards, and Nicole wondered whether her family had said something to him, told him what they thought of the short amount of time he’d spent at her side, made it clear they thought he should head back there.

Part of her wasn’t sure she wanted Ezra there if he didn’t want to be there, but was pressured into being there by her family. Yet another part of her, the selfish part of her she had to admit existed, couldn’t bring herself to say that, wanted him there by her side, knowing that every minute he was with her was a minute he wasn’t with Aria Montgomery, was a minute she could hold on to the hope that he would stay with Nicole, that they could pick up where they had left off.

Then one day, one of her aunts had come rushing into her hospital room in a state of agitation. “I don’t understand this,” she had begun. “One of those journalists just cornered me outside, and said something odd…”

“Vultures, the whole pack of them,” Nicole’s father had said. “Don’t take any notice of anything they had to say. They’d say anything to get you to talk.”

“It was about Ezra,” her aunt ignored this. “He asked me to comment on something he’d been told, that Ezra wasn’t engaged to Nicole at all. Apparently someone else is saying that Ezra’s engaged to her. Someone called Aria Montgomery.”

Nicole’s father had quickly shut her aunt up, hurried her out of the room, thinking Nicole was asleep. But in that moment when Nicole heard it, she knew, and she suddenly understood why Ezra had been so distant.

If Aria had been upfront with that journalist, maybe she would be upfront with Nicole too. So Nicole said nothing to her family, but decided that she would make her way to Ezra’s, see if she could find Aria there, to just know for sure what, if anything, was going on between them. If they weren’t together and that journalist had just got hold of something like the story from years ago when Aria had dated Ezra while being his student, at least Nicole could dismiss it. And if they were…Nicole didn’t want to think about how she would feel if Aria confirmed it. She’d kept telling herself all the way over there that there had to be some other explanation.

Then she looked at Aria’s face, saw her expression as she looked at her, and Nicole knew.

_In her eyes, in her voice  
In the heat that filled the air  
Part of him still lingers there  
I know what pain her life today must be  
But if it all comes down to her or me  
I don't care, I swear, I'll fight _

Aria had accepted Emily’s explanation for the Nicole phone call at the time because she’d wanted to believe it. It was much easier to accept the possibility that someone had got hold of Nicole’s phone and had called Ezra than the possibility that either Nicole was still alive, or that that was some kind of ghostly thing going on. But Emily’s story about how Pam Fields had been called three months after Wayne died had made a lot more sense. There was a legitimate explanation for that with the cousin getting the phone by accident along with Wayne’s old clothes and then using that phone to call Pam and tell her without thinking. Even supposing the kidnappers had Nicole’s phone, or someone else altogether somehow got their hands on it, why would they use it to call Ezra?

Butt dial, or something stupid like that. There was no other explanation. Aria had already erased the call, and she knew in her head how crazy it would sound if she even mentioned it to Ezra. “By the way, you just got a call from your dead girlfriend.” He’d probably think she belonged in Radley herself, just like good old Mary Drake.

Even as it had become confirmed that Nicole was alive, and Ezra knew what Aria had done, Aria thought about the hope she had felt back then, the way she had clung on to any possible other explanation than that Nicole was alive and was trying to contact Ezra again. She’d tried to brush off that stupid journalist who had claimed that Nicole and Ezra were engaged. Journalists got things wrong all the time, after all, or made things up or exaggerated them just to get a better story. Look at all the times she herself had been in the paper after everything that had happened with Charlotte. Half of what had appeared back then hadn’t been quite what had happened. That guy probably just thought Nicole and Ezra being engaged made for a more romantic story.

Holden thought it was strange, the way Aria had carried on with the wedding plans, talked about how she was going to surprise Ezra by having it all ready for him and all he had to do was turn up. Aria could see it in his face, that the question had entered his mind about whether or not Ezra really would. And then there had been that stupid news story on the TV, when Caleb had looked at what was on the news and Aria could see the pity in his eyes. She didn’t want his pity, or Holden’s. She wanted them both there watching her walk down the aisle to meet Ezra, smiling at Byron’s jokes in his speech, tucking into the food provided by Holden’s family business.

Hanna’s idea for Aria to go ahead with the wedding planning had seemed like a good idea at the time. But as time went on, while Ezra remained with Nicole and made no attempt to contact Aria or to reply to her, as she heard more and more in the media about Nicole and Ezra’s fairytale ending, Aria found herself beginning to wonder if she was deluding herself in believing the wedding was ever going to happen, or whether Ezra would end up going back to Nicole. And yes, she had thought that if she went directly to Nicole and confronted her, at least she might get some answers. But Holden had been right to intervene; it was Ezra who Aria really needed to be having this conversation with, not Nicole, needed to talk to him about how the time had come for Ezra to start putting their relationship first now, to distance himself from his past with Nicole and concentrate on his future with Aria.

Yet it was easier to tell herself this before Nicole was standing in front of her, a reminder of what she stood to lose.

_Now that I've seen her  
She's more than a name  
I don't hate this girl even so  
Now that I've seen her  
I can't stay the same  
Who's this man that I trusted?  
Now I have to know_


End file.
